On Media

The worst night on cable news

By DYLAN BYERS

06/05/2012 10:47 PM EDT

If ever there was a political event to lay bare the partisan ideologies of the cable news media, the Wisconsin recall was it.

MSNBC was blatantly rooting for Tom Barrett to defeat Gov. Scott Walker, even sending union champion Ed Schultz to cover an event with no apologies for the dog he has in the fight. (Earlier tonight, Chris Matthews even told Schultz that if he wasn't an MSNBC host, he could be head of the AFL-CIO.) When it became clear that Barrett would lose, Schultz looked almost teary eyed. Not long after, the network's contributors immediately began suggesting that this was, in fact, good news for Obama — who, after all, hadn't even set foot in Wisconsin — and began attacking Mitt Romney.

Meanwhile, Fox News was blatantly rooting for Gov. Scott Walker, and the moment it became clear that Walker might win, host Sean Hannity called it "a repudiation of big unions," which did "everything they could do to demonize Scott Walker." Guest Hugh Hewitt then predicted that, five months from now, Romney would follow Walker just "as Reagan followed Thatcher." Fox's Greta Van Susteren later hosted what amounted to a victory celebration for the Republicans.

Given such blatantly partisan coverage, it was absolutely impossible to watch either network and gain any clear understanding of the actual significance of the event, much less what effect it would actually have on the 2012 presidential election.

Which means it was the perfect night for CNN, the network that bears the slogan "CNN = Politics" and claims to have "the best political team on television," to step up and offer what only it can offer: a semblance of nonpartisan political news coverage.

This is what was happening on the three networks between 9:48 p.m. and 9:51 p.m. tonight, during which NBC called the Wisconsin election for Walker:

CNN has no obligation to cover the Wisconsin recall, and one could argue that CNN doesn't need to break that political news, or spend the 10 o'clock hour speculating on the potential political ramifications of the various outcomes. But I highly doubt that CNN would make that argument.